Marks with a character, figure, symbol and/or the like are used as fashions or for distinguishing or showing one group or team on clothes including uniforms, and all kinds of bags such as handbags and pouches. These marks are mainly caused to adhere to clothes or the like by the following two methods. More specifically, a felt or melton fabric is sewed on an adherend by hand or a sewing machine, or a fabric, such as a knit, cloth or nylon fabric, having a hot-melt layer is processed into a desired form, and the processed fabric is caused to adhere by arranging it in such a manner that the hot-melt layer comes into contact with the clothes, and heating and pressurizing it.
The sewing method permits strong and durable adhesion between the adherend and the mark so far as the mark is basically made of a material through which a needle and yarn can pass. However, this method has involved a problem that the sewed portion is poor to the touch, or the adherend is wrinkled.
As the method of causing the mark to adhere by heating and pressurizing, it is proposed to provide a fabric for marking of a type that the fabric is heat-bonded under pressure with a thermoplastic hot-melt synthetic resin film (Patent Literature 1). This literature relates to a fabric for marking obtained by providing a thermo-compression bonding layer-forming material for being laminated on a marking fabric making up the fabric for marking of the thermo-compression bonding type as a three-layer structure of an intervention layer, which is not melted at each heating and pressurizing operation when the thermo-compression bonding layer-forming material is prepared, it is laminated on the marking fabric, or the marking fabric is caused to adhere to an object of bonding, and thermoplastic hot-melt synthetic resin films arranged on both sides of the intervention layer, and laminating the thermo-compression bonding layer-forming material on the marking fabric. According to this proposal, the adhesives selected according to the object of bonding are separated by the intervention layer, so that both adhesives can be prevented from permeating each other more than need. As a result, both fabrics that are materials for mark and uniform can exhibit the necessary and sufficient anchoring function by the melt resins to stick them on each other. However, this literature does unfortunately not specifically mention materials usable for the thermoplastic hot-melt synthetic resin films described herein and characteristics or properties and physical properties exhibited by the resulting fabric for marking.
There is also proposed a fabric for marking comprising a stretch marking fabric body and a hot-melt component composed of a urethane resin film and laminated on one side of the marking fabric body (Patent Literature 2). This is obtained by laminating the hot-melt component having stretching force even after melted on the marking fabric rich in stretchability. The fabric for marking fabricated in this manner is stuck on a fabric rich in stretching force, whereby the fabric for marking is rich in stretching force even after stuck, is not easily peeled and has sufficient durability against extreme movement. However, this fabric for marking has a structure that the marking fabric appears on an outermost surface, so that it is hard to say that the fabric for marking gives careful consideration to such a problem that when this fabric for marking is used in, for example, a swimming suit, its hue is deteriorated by disinfectant chlorine in a pool, or its color is faded by ultraviolet light when used in a uniform outdoors used in, for example, baseball.
It is further proposed to provide a fabric for marking comprising a hot-melt adhesive layer for marking fabric and a hot-melt adhesive layer for fabric (Patent Literature 3). The object of this proposal is to improve workability by providing hot-melt adhesive layers as a laminated structure and suppressing elongation of a marking fabric body by the hot-melt adhesive layers when the fabric for marking is cut conforming to the shape of a mark. This solves the problems of the conventional fabric for marking (Patent Literature 2 described above) using the hot-melt adhesive layer composed of the polyurethane resin, i.e., problems that the hot-melt adhesive layer elongates together with a marking fabric body when the fabric for marking is cut, so that the cutting work is difficult, and stringiness or bleeding of the hot-melt adhesive layer occurs on the cut surface of the mark to deteriorate the finish of the cut surface.
As described above, in the conventional fabrics for marking, adhesion, stretchability, durability, simplicity and processability and the like have been mainly investigated, and the resistance to color fading of a mark itself has not been mentioned or investigated.